Climate change may help hibernating animals hulk out
Climate change seems to supersize at least one animal species, according to a paper published in Nature on Wednesday. A study of the yellow-bellied marmot used data going back over thirty years to show that the animals are growing not only in number, but in size: their body masses are up significantly from ten years ago, after holding mostly steady for 24 years.
Scientists have been tracking the yellow-bellied marmots in the study since 1976. The collection of critters lives in the Upper East River Valley in Colorado, where they hibernate during the colder months every year, emerging to reproduce when the weather warms up. Because the data on the marmot population goes back before the climate started warming quickly, researchers decided to break it down to see if they could isolate any effects of recent changes on the animals.
The data showed that the mass and number of marmots was fairly steady from 1976 until 2000, with the population oscillating between 50 and 75. But, by 2006 the population had tripled from its 2001 level, reaching 150 marmots, and adult marmots had a six percent higher body mass on average.
Researchers think this growth in numbers may have to do with the changing climate. The marmots seem to be emerging from hibernation earlier and giving birth earlier in the season. This allows the baby marmots a longer initial period to grow before their maturation is slowed by winter, and a longer overall time before maturity sets in, resulting in their larger size.
The authors note that the two statistics are likely related, as the larger marmots seem to have higher rates of survival. The surrounding environment also seems to have changed in a way that supports the demands of a larger number of larger marmots: tall bluebells, a favorite food of the yellow-bellied marmot, are flowering at higher rates.
Of course, marmots are only a tiny portion of the local environment, and their reaction to warmer weather may not be general. The bump may even be short-lived, as researchers speculate that increasingly long and dry summers will raise the mortality rates, canceling out the population benefits of larger body sizes.
Nature, 2010. DOI: 10.1038/nature09210 (About DOIs).
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Peeing, vomit, nude zombies: Ars finds them, backs up Blumenthal
Earlier this week, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal released a curious press release. In it, he expressed his desire to protect children from "a subgenre of games that encourages players to commit graphic acts of homicide, rape, and sadism." But what really caught our eye were the descriptions of games that Blumenthal used. Decapitate people with shovels? Beat police to death while they beg for mercy? Slaughter nude female zombies? Do these games actually exist? It was time to find out.
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HP's Windows 7 Slate is not dead yet
The bumpy saga of the HP Slate took another turn this week with the revelation that the product is still destined to launch with Windows 7, albeit with a focus on the enterprise market.Originally unveiled at CES earlier this year by Steve Ballmer, the HP Slate was touted by Microsoft as evidence that the Windows 7 platform was viable for touchscreen mobile computing products. HP initially aimed to launch the device this year at a price of $1,500, but the hardware maker appeared to change course after its high-profile acquisition of Palm. HP confirmed a few months ago that it was dumping Windows 7 in favor of Palm's webOS on the Slate. The news this week that the Windows 7 slate has risen from the dead comes as a surprise.
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Droid X rooted, bootloader still locked
Android enthusiast Stephen Bird found a way to gain root access on Motorola's new Droid X smartphone. He ported an exploit for the Motorola Milestone that was recently published by developer Sebastian Krahmer.The exploit takes advantage of an Android flaw that is similar to a privilege escalation vulnerability Krahmer found in udev last year. He briefly explains the hack in a little message to Google's engineers that is included in a document that he distributes with the exploit code.
"For the Google Engineers: The vulnerability is inside init, perfectly porting old udev's CVE-2009-1185," he wrote. "Exploitation sounds easy therefore but only the experienced will recognize its beauty."
Droid X owners can use the Android debugging tool to run the exploit on their device. Step-by-step instructions are available from the AllDroid forum community. The exploit will give users the ability to modify the contents of the filesystem and use certain third-party software like screenshot and tethering tools that only work on rooted devices.
Although the phone can now be rooted, the Droid X bootloader encryption hasn't been cracked yet—meaning that there is still no way to install custom ROM images on the device. It's possible that root access will simplify the process of identifying and exploiting weaknesses in the bootloader lock, however, so we could potentially see a full Droid X hack soon.
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You're going deeper: "The Signal" comes to Alan Wake
Playing through the upcoming new episode of Alan Wake, "The Signal," caused some mixed feelings. The original ending of the game—and we'll avoid spoilers—was so satisfying and so perfect that continuing the story was almost a disappointment. That said, things do continue, and Alan Wake is once again in play, trying to figure out how to get back to something approaching normalcy.The content is free. If you bought the game new, there is a download code in your box, and it re-uses many of the settings and assets from the main story. The voice acting is new, the story is being pushed forward, and there are a few twists to the gameplay. Words float around the world, to be blasted by your flashlight and turned into items and even events. In a fun twist there are now "bad words" that, when hit with your flashlight, have negative consequences for Alan.
The problem here is that the basic mechanics of Alan Wake aren't as fun as the characters and story behind the game. "The Signal" offers a lot of running around while confused, but doesn't really advance the characters or storyline significantly.
"The Signal" is coming to the Xbox 360 on July 27, via a one-time use code included in new copies of Alan Wake.
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Only 0.3% of files on BitTorrent confirmed to be legal
The large majority of content found on BitTorrent is illegal, a new study out of the University of Ballarat in Australia has confirmed. Researchers from the university's Internet Commerce Security Laboratory scraped torrents from 23 trackers and looked up the content to determine whether the file was confirmed to be copyrighted. They found that 89 percent of the files they sampled were confirmed to be illegally shared, and most of the remaining ambiguous 11 percent was likely to be infringing.The total sample consisted of 1,000 torrent files—a random selection from the most active seeded files on the trackers they used. Each file was manually checked to see whether it was being legally distributed. Only three cases—0.3 percent of the files—were determined to be definitely not infringing, while 890 files were confirmed to be illegal.
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Forge World offers giant map, new tools for Halo Reach
Forge was a big part of Halo 3, letting players create their own maps for multiplayer play. But it wasn't perfect, so for the upcoming Halo Reach, the developers at Bungie are reinventing the editor, crafting what's been dubbed Forge World.Forge World was revealed at the San Diego Comic-Con. It takes place in a massive open world, far bigger than even the biggest maps from any previous game. It consists of numerous regions, from wide open areas to tight indoor scenes. There's mountains, beaches, rocks, and even a small island offshore. In short, it's a big space to play in with lots of variety.
The "Pinnacle" map built using Forge World.
Given some of the incredible creations that came out of the original Forge, it's hard not to get excited about seeing what players will be able to do with the new tools offered in Forge World. You can get an early glimpse of the editor in action in this short Bungie documentary.
Halo Reach will be launching on September 14 for the Xbox 360, both as a standalone game and as a console pack-in.
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Moss uses mushroom cloud to spread its spores
Anyone who's ever done a bit of gardening or hiking is probably aware of sphagnum moss—it's estimated to cover about one percent of the Earth's surface, and is harvested for use as a potting material. That sort of spread is rather impressive, given that the moss grows close to the ground, and will be at a disadvantage compared to vascular plants when it comes to sending out its offspring to colonize new ground. A paper in Thursday's Science indicates that the moss has evolved an explosive spore release that uses a phenomenon called a vortex ring to ensure that its offspring are spread far and wide.
The problem faced by the moss is a tradeoff that an engineer would probably recognize. To spread on a breeze, the spores have to be extremely light so that gravity doesn't dominate their motion. But turbulent air doesn't extend down to the ground where the mosses live. So, the moss needs to propel its spores to a significant height (10cm or more, which is significant if you're a moss), and here, the lack of momentum implied by the low mass of the spore becomes a problem.
The moss has solved this by a combination of velocity—spore release is explosive—and aerodynamics. As the spore container dries, it shrinks from a large sphere to a cylindrical shape that more closely resembles a cannon. This process raises the air pressure to as much as 500 kiloPascals (about 5 times atmospheric pressure), and the spore case seems to fail catastrophically, releasing everything in a burst. Even so, based on velocity alone, this should only launch the spores about a centimeter; instead, time lapse video shows that they travel well beyond five times that height.
The secret, it seems, is in the creation of a vortex ring, a toroid of rapidly rotating air, at the very top of the column of spores. This structure, which gives the release the appearance of a miniature mushroom cloud, causes some spores to fall off very quickly. But it pushes spores in the main body of the release upwards and creates a wake with reduced air resistance, getting most of the spores to a decent height.
Science has been kind enough to post a series of videos, shot at anywhere from 250 to 100,000 frames/second, showing different aspects of the mini-mushroom clouds.
Science, 2010. DOI: 10.1126/science.1190179 (About DOIs).
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Free iPhone 4 case program in full swing, requires app
As promised during its special press conference last week, Apple's iPhone 4 Case Program has begun in earnest. The program provides a free iPhone 4 case for any user who wants one, in an effort to mitigate the device's antenna detuning problem. iPhone 4 owners who already bought a Bumper from Apple or AT&T can get a refund, while those who haven't gotten one can choose between a free Bumper or a selection of third-party cases.If you purchased your Bumper via the online Apple Store, you'll automatically get a refund. Yesterday we heard reports that Apple has already begun processing those refunds. Credit cards will be automatically credited, while those who used gift cards will be mailed a gift card for the refund amount.
If you purchased your Bumper at an Apple retail store using a credit card, Apple says you should get an automatic refund (though some of us on staff haven't gotten ours yet). If you used cash, check or a gift card, you have until September 30 to bring your receipt in for a refund. If you bought one at an AT&T store, you'll have to fill out and mail in (by September 30) a rebate form to get your refund.
For current iPhone 4 users who want a new Bumper or other case, you'll have to download the iPhone 4 Case Program app from the App Store. When the app launches, you sign in with your Apple ID, and you'll be presented with a selection of cases to choose from. Currently you can choose either a black Bumper or one of seven cases from InCase, Belkin, Griffin, and Speck.
The app notes that "case availability and selection may change," and Jobs said during the press conference that there won't likely be enough Bumpers for everyone who bought an iPhone 4. If you're having antenna problems in the meantime, though, you'll have to wait a bit for this current solution—cases ship in 3 to 5 weeks.
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Apple pushes white iPhone 4 to late 2010
Those of you holding out for white iPhone 4s will have to continue your practice in patience: Apple says that they continue to be a challenge to manufacture and won't be available until later this year. That's right—no longer will they be available in the second half of July, which was already pushed back from late June when the iPhone 4 originally launched. Apple has pushed the date back again by apparently several months, and is no longer committing to a date.
Apple's latest statement follows one made one month ago just before the iPhone 4 hit the streets. At that time, Apple said that the white version had "proven more challenging to manufacture than expected," and were therefore being delayed for at least half a month. Steve Jobs even said during last week's iPhone 4 press conference, where he discussed the iPhone's antenna issues, that the white iPhone was still on track to ship at the end of July, so either he was stretching the truth or the latest statement was a last-minute decision.
Once again, Apple did not specify the nature of the challenge in manufacturing the white iPhone—the company merely said that the availability of the "more popular" black iPhone 4 was not affected (is it more popular because it's the only one you can order?).
We speculated last month that the colorant used in the material could be causing a problem, possibly when dealing with with the ion-exchange hardening process used in making Gorilla Glass, which iFixit said Apple is using for its front and back covers. More recently, a rumor out of Engadget said that Apple's glass supplier was having issues working out the "perfect combination of paint thickness and opacity."
Whatever the issue, it seems that Apple has run into more speedbumps with this product than most others in recent history. Apple still describes the iPhone 4 launch as the "most successful" product launch it has had to date, but we can't help but wonder what's going on behind closed doors.
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